Another remarkable thing happened this past week. It was so touchingly, spookily unlikely, that the theme music from The Twilight Zone plays in my head every time I think about it.
Every year for a very long time now, I’ve kept a notebook close at hand — not too small, but not larger than A5 size. It’s within reach to capture everyday chores, mid-range project plans, packing/grocery/mailing/Christmas lists, notes for articles, monthly calendars (hand-drawn on the lined or dotted or gridded paper). I’ve called it my external brain, the Source of All Knowledge, the mental security blanket. Doctors Jane and Jessica were familiar with it, their nurses expecting me to have The Notebook open on my knee, either to learn about changes to the current medical regimen or to give back notes on how the previous week’s home treatment went.
The 2018 notebook was unusually impractical but so cute: A kraft paper cover of an old-fashioned camera, cut out to show the pink swirling patterned page behind it. The cut-outs kept tearing; the camera was held together with tape by June when I embarked on clearing, decorating and selling my mother’s home. And it was spattered with tears as Timothy’s ailments grew intractable and his hospital stays longer all through August and September.
And then it disappeared.
In the chaos and emotion of his passing, the notebook — unneeded, since there was no discharge plan to learn, and all messages to friends were sent on the fly, no drafts or revisions — just disappeared.
So many helping hands in the hours after he died, so many bundles of medical kit no longer needed, and so many bags accumulated in the weeks I’d spent at his hospital bedside… When I couldn’t find it, no matter how many times I checked suitcases and garment bags and purses and guitar cases and computer bags, I presumed it had been thrown into a bundle of medicine and thrown away, unknowingly. (For a while, lost and distressed, I wondered if I’d buried it with him, unknowingly.) So even though I’ve periodically mourned it — the written record of our last year together — I resigned myself to the notebook’s permanent disappearance.
Tuesday night last, I brought home my work laptop, with its mouse, pad and cords, as usual in the rolling case issued by the IT department to protect their kit. I pulled out all these items on Wednesday morning, working on the dining room table as the chimney sweeps did their thing in the living room, and repacked it Wednesday night.
Thursday morning, I rolled the bag into my office and began unpacking: laptop, mouse… and then someone interrupted me, chatting at the door so I did not look down to pull out the mouse-pad. I unzipped all the various zippers by feel as I looked up to talk, and when she left, I pulled what was in my hand out of some side pocket.
It was not my mouse-mat. It was the notebook.
I’ve had many surprising things happen in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever looked as dumbfounded as I must have done in that instant. It was so impossible this object should be in my hand, looking just as it did more than a year ago, complete with blue steel pen — I believe my brain briefly decided it must be someone else’s notebook, not mine.
But here it is, in my own hand: lists of wholesome foods and pharmacy pick-up dates, meetings with realtors and electricians, and road directions for carefree trips taken before the two most important people in my life began to fall apart.
It held me together then; I reckon it will hold together now, when I least thought I would have its help.